With reports that the death toll in Syria has now exceeded 100,000 people, the Syria we see today is a shell of its former self: a broken country, fragmenting before our eyes, riven with sectarianism and increasingly polarized as the…

IT WAS THE SPRING OF 1994. The Smashing Pumpkins ruled the airwaves. I was 22 years old, recently graduated from Arizona State University and living in the “Real World” house in San Francisco. Rooming with six strangers and having my…